Follow up to yesterday....

This article ran in the Washington Post today. My cliff note version is the artist said she did not actually do what she said she did to the Yale paper. The art project is made up. Hmmmm?

So tell me, do you believe she really did it? Or do you believe she faked it? Comment please.


For the record, I think the Yale Officials are outraged and pretty much forced her to say she didn't really do it. I think the statement is forced. Of course I understand it, I'm pretty sure Yale doesn't want to be known as the university that encouraged the abortion art experiment.

My goodness???

Today's question is: why on earth would someone decide to do an outrageous art project??

Background: A friend posted about this story on a board I visit often. I am at a loss for words over it. It seriously makes me wonder about people, seriously. Here is the full story (it's really outrageous, be prepared):

A Yale student who claims she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" and then took drugs to induce miscarriages for her senior art project says she will showcase the stomach-turning display next week — complete with her own blood samples and videos from the terminated possible pregnancies.

The story of art major Aliza Shvarts' upcoming exhibit, which the Yale Daily News broke Thursday, has sparked widespread disgust and outrage.

"It’s clearly depraved. I think the poor woman has got some major mental problems," said National Right to Life Committee President Wanda Franz. "She’s a serial killer. This is just a horrible thought."

Critics on campus have said the display sounds like a shock-and-awe look at the highly sensitive issue of abortion and called it a sick stunt to get attention. The abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America also condemned the exhibit.

"This 'project' is offensive and insensitive to the women who have suffered the heartbreak of miscarriage," said NARAL's communication director Ted Miller in a statement.

But Shvarts said the goal of the project is to encourage debate and discussion about the connection between art and the human body.

"I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts, whose age was withheld, told Yale's newspaper. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone."

The senior's campus phone has been disconnected, and she did not respond to e-mailed requests for an interview. Yale University also didn't return calls seeking comment.

Shvarts told the school paper that her sperm donors, whom she declined to identify, were not paid for their participation but added that she did require them to be screened for STDs.

The drugs she took to induce contractions and miscarriages were legal and herbal in nature, according to Shvarts — who didn't specify what they were. The art major insisted she wasn't concerned about the effects of her research on her own body.

But ob-gyn Dr. Manuel Alvarez, FOXNews.com's health managing editor, said the young woman should have been worried because what she was doing was extremely unsafe.

"It’s quite dangerous," Alvarez said. "She was playing Russian roulette with her life, if she indeed did this to these unborn children for the sake of art. I don’t even have the words to express the disbelief that I have."

Alvarez said herbal remedies to trigger uterine contractions have long been used in countries where abortions are illegal — including certain raspberry teas and strong cinnamon teas — but they are far from consistently effective, and they tend to be risky.

"They interfere with pregnancy and are either toxic to the fetus or cause contractions," he explained. "The reason they are effective is that they create side effects, but none of them are 100 percent prescriptive to be abortive."

Shvarts wouldn't say how many times she was artificially inseminated and actually got pregnant for the project — which she described to the Yale paper as a huge cube hanging from the ceiling and swathed in plastic sheeting smeared with her blood from the reported miscarriages. The existence and number of pregnancies Shvarts may have had weren't independently confirmed.

Videos taken of what the college student says were self-induced abortions in her bathtub will be projected both on the cube's sides and on the gallery walls.

The exhibit will be on public display from April 22 to May 1 at Yale's Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall. Shvarts will be honored at a reception April 25.

Franz likened Shvarts' process of artificial insemination and induced miscarriages to the human experimentation that took place during the Holocaust. She said the Yale senior's work highlights a stark truth about American society's approach to abortion.

"She really has hit on a reality that what she has done is legal," Franz said. "Anything she chooses to do here can’t be stopped in terms of legality. And there are people fighting for her right to do this."

Alvarez believes such an endeavor in the name of art is offensive, harmful and insensitive, especially to women who face difficult choices about pregnancy or who aren't able to conceive.

"Anybody who trivializes a woman’s choice to terminate a pregnancy is really not contributing anything positive to these matters," he said. "I don’t see anything artistic about this. ... It’s completely unethical and immoral. What have we accomplished? Absolutely nothing."

take??

Today's question is: What's with people not making kids accountable for their actions?

Background: This weekend I took the girls to a girl scout sleepover at a YMCA camp called Camp Duncan. We had a little incident while there. Let me explain.....

It was raining. It was cold. It was totally kinda miserable. But the girls had fun.

We had poncho's to keep dry. I had an umbrella too because I had my glasses on and I didn't want them all dripping with water. I'd have to keep drying them on my shirt if they didn't stay out of the rain.

After our second activity of the morning we were in the lodge getting warmed up and having a little hot chocolate/coffee. I left my umbrella outside the main door under an overhang. It was by it's self, no other umbrellas were around.

By the time we had to go to the next activity it was raining pretty hard. I went to get my umbrella and it was gone. No where to be found. I was livid.

Mostly I was mad because I just couldn't understand how someone could pick up someone else's umbrella and use it. Like what exactly did whomever take it think it was doing there? Clearly, someone owned that umbrella.

For the next hour I steamed over my stolen umbrella. When we got back to the lodge for lunch I stood by the window waiting for the poor soul who decided to walk off with my umbrella to return.

And then she came.

It wasn't a mom, like I expected, it was a kid. A little girl (5th or 6th grade, old enough to know better) was walking along with my umbrella, keeping herself dry. She didn't have a poncho.

I walked out and approached her. I asked her where she got the umbrella. She said she picked it up out front of the lodge (right where I had left it, of course) when it was raining to keep dry. I said, well you realize that you can't just pick up any umbrella because you want to keep dry, that umbrella was there for a reason, because the person that left it there was using it. She said well I'm bringing it back, sorry (not exactly the sorry I'd expect from my own children).

Entitled, totally entitled.

She gave the umbrella back to me. I said "I get that you are young but you need to realize that you can't just take whatever it is you want because you want it" and then I walked away with my umbrella.

The thing is, that right behind her were her troop leaders. Not once did they make any mention of the fact that she had taken the umbrella. They did not make her accountable for her unkind act whatsoever. They didn't talk to her, they didn't make her come over and apologize, they said nothing. Nothing.

Honestly I was appalled. Totally and completely appalled.

What is wrong with people that they can't teach a kid a lesson about what not to do? Of course, all the girls in my troop will most likely never take something that doesn't belong to them after that incident.

(although I don't think I could say I was a very good example of how to handle the situation, I was a little totally obsessed with finding that umbrella, to the point that the girls followed me outside to see what I'd say. That was, admittedly, embarrassing. And truth be known, one of the girls in the troop found the most important detail to tell her dad was her account of my stolen umbrella. Looks like I need to learn to take a chill pill.)